


The Merchant and the Apprentice

by FrenchBlue32



Category: Amuse Entertainment, Day6 (Band), MAGNUM (Korea Band), Silverboys - Fandom, Stray Kids (Band), TREASURE (Korea Band), The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Bandits & Outlaws, Changbin isn’t human, Fantasy elements, Historical, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Minor Violence, Mysticism, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Running Away, Slow Burn, Travel, Universe Inspired by The Alchemist, reaallyyyy slow burn, you’ll see what I mean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-02-18 16:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21930307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchBlue32/pseuds/FrenchBlue32
Summary: Rebellious but knowledgeable runagate Jisung with a desire for adventure and charismatic, traveling merchant Minho just trying to scrape by with honest work. What could go wrong?
Relationships: Bae Joonyoung | Jacob/Moon Hyungseo | Kevin, Bang Yedam/Kim Doyoung (MAGNUM), Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Kang Younghyun | Young K/Park Jaehyung | Jae, Noa Kazama/Kim Junkyu
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	1. Voluntas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alternativekpop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternativekpop/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins.

Loose curls stick to the sweat built up on Jisung’s forehead. He sighs as he stands up to look over the work he had been carving into the soft sands. Jisung hums, eyebrows scrunched in concentration as he runs over his previous calculations again. He carefully rests the end of his stick in the fine grains of the earth, seeing a logical conclusion to his mathematical problem. His stick skitters through the clay underneath as he presses a score into the ground. Lines meet. Numbers change. A solution is reached. Jisung relaxes his hold on his stick, loosening the preciseness of his stroke. He draws loops over his work before he scratches it all out.

Jisung is bored.

He’s also really hot, perspiring uncomfortably under his full body garb against the sun’s intense rays. He would practice his study inside if his home weren’t such an easily suffocating environment. Studying inside also means the potential to be summoned at a moment’s notice by his father to perform some repetitive task for the store. Everyday, he studies and learns in an unending cycle, either in the backroom of his father’s crystal and glass store or in their home, a floor above their humble establishment. Or if he feels especially stuffy, he'll find himself outside, like today.

Thoughts lazily roam through his mind. Jisung takes a peak through the front store window and spots his father polishing glassware and glass figures for display. He supposes he could ask if his studying time was up yet, but he puts the thought on hold as his gaze switches to observing people ambling down their lonely road. Their store is on a small hill, a quiet corner of Jisung’s local neighborhood. Aside from his father’s little store, unoriginally named the Crystal Emporium, there’s not much else, save for a few general knick knacks and wares stores, two animal keepers, a local tailor, and a flora conservatory.

Jisung’s eyes search down the road, down the hill, to the road that winds from the local marketplace. He can see a bit of the bustling activity lingering at the edges of the market streets, to where Jisung’s lonely road branches off of it.

He goes there bi-weekly. As a child, he went weekly in the company of his father, becoming familiar with the rhythm and people of the central economic life surrounding their little corner of the world. As Jisung grew, his father allowed him to take a weekly trip down to the market himself, in addition to the weekly trip with his father. Jisung usually doesn’t buy much in his solo wandering. The money his father gives him to spend is usually invested into food, alchemy scrolls, books, and on occasion, a new outfit.

The little marketplace has always been a highlight in his life, mainly because it is the only place where anything interesting ever happens. Jisung watched the people who stayed and moved over time, watched how the market evolved to meet the demands of different products over time, and watched the unique ticks and quirks of people’s behaviours and speech. It was the only place where he felt free, away from his father’s expectations of him to take over the business some day, away from the slow and inactive life on their lonely hill.

To be fair, it’s not that Jisung’s freedoms had been stowed away by a cruel overseer. He is no slave, and regardless of the filial piety he had gradually grown hesitant to abide by, he refuses to even entertain the notion that his position could even be compared to such oppression. Jisung’s father is far from being a cruel man, but as for how he compares to the scholars Jisung looks up to and the heros and anti-heros Jisung reads in books, his father lacks a personality to be what Jisung considers a great man.

Jisung’s qualms lie in his keen awareness that, although he’s visited the marketplace plenty of times, he has _only_ visited the marketplace. Every time he steps into the whirlwind of the street’s activity, he’s reminded of the fact that there is a bigger world out there—that there are many marketplaces such as his, yet far, far different.

Jisung likes to think he’s been an obedient son for most of his life. The prospect that his life is predestined to be confined to the small Crystal Emporium at the top of the hill has never failed to make him feel stifled and queasy however.

He finds himself standing at the edge of the Crystal Emporium’s storefront. Perhaps. Perhaps he could wager just one step, just one small venture into the inner streets. Not just the back alleys that Jisung has memorized on his trips to the marketplace, but even further. He could maybe even reach the pavilion at the end of the market streets. He visits it, at most, once a month. It couldn’t possibly be that far, right?

Jisung feels the murmur of the busy bodies down the hill draw him. Every second of the crowd’s cadence is a beckon for him to approach, to leave, to come, to break through the barrier that anchors Jisung to his position.

The feeling reminds him of an experiment his teacher, Chan, had demonstrated for him when Jisung was five. His teacher had given him his first introduction to the concept of energy, the key ingredient to all things mystical and physical in the world. In truthfulness, there was nothing particularly special about the experiment itself, where it’s been replicated over thousands of times since its creation, but to little Jisung, the way the sun sides of the two small, cobalt horseshoes resisted the push of Chan’s hands and the way the sun and moon sides naturally attached without much effort sparked an avidity Jisung would need to subdue for the rest of his life. He had spent days clicking the opposite sun and moon sides into place and sliding the resistant identical sides together. They’d be in his hands any time Jisung drifted off into idol daydreaming—the cobalt horseshoes resisting, clicking, sliding, and falling into place. Only now, the two cobalt horseshoes were Jisung and the lifelong boundary Jisung’s father had delineated for him.

The sun and the moon sides clicking together. The imagery runs repeatedly through his head. Jisung struggles against that rumbling, kinetic energy inside of him. It screams through his spine and electrifies the nerves at the tips of his fingers. All it would take is one step, and he could race down the sandy streets. It would be a competition against time and his conscience, as well as his father’s conscience inside of his. The calculations dance before him, estimating how long each street would take to run down and which alleys would make for the best shortcuts.

“Jisung!”

Curses.

Jisung inwardly groans. How does he manage to have this happen every time? The moment he feels his courage climb to the level needed for him to do something brash, it always gets destroyed by his father right before it can peak. 

“Yes father?!” Jisung replies.

“Come inside! Your study session is done for today!”

As Jisung trudges inside, he flinches when he hears a squawk, accompanied by a ruffle of feathers. He turns to see an eagle land in his window. The eagle’s arrival is promptly followed by the bird keeper whistling and calling after it.

“Get back here!” Jisung hears the bird keeper yell. Jisung’s father shoots up from his seat and runs over to meet the bird keeper. Jisung watches in quiet amusement as his father and the bird keeper wrestle the eagle back into the bird keeper’s hold. Finally, the bird keeper manages to tie a lock around one of the eagle’s legs, allowing for the bird keeper to hold the eagle in place. The bird keeper begins to profusely apologize for the disruption as Jisung’s father reassures the other man. The eagle suddenly matches eyes with Jisung, it’s beady pupils peering into Jisung. A promise suddenly forms in Jisung’s head, a promise to leave, soon.

And he’ll bring the eagle with him as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy (late) birthday Bee! Cheers with your (later) birthday present (that will be completed even later)! In all actuality tho, I'm super sorry that my unicellular organism of a brain managed to get your birthday wrong alkdjflksjfd I hope you like it <3 <3 <3


	2. Occurant

There’s no reason for Jisung to restrain the excitement welled up inside of him, but he does it anyway to prevent himself from acting too out of the ordinary. His father glances at him. “Do you have your satchel?”

“Yes father!” Jisung chirps.

A ghost of a smile appears on his father’s lips, before it disappears. “You seem to be in high spirits.”

Well, so much for trying to restrain himself. Jisung trails after his father through the doorway of their abode, lifting the striped curtain. “Do we need the wagon?” Jisung asks. 

His father shakes his head. “We have enough silica, lime, ash, and crystals for us to not need to restock for another week. We’ll only visit the butcher and the farmer’s street today.”

Jisung nods as they turn to enter the stream of people walking to and fro through the marketplace, it’s streets thin and winding. Jisung’s eyes dart around, gathering information on the state of the marketplace. He greets the many shop owners that line the sandy roads along the way, many of who Jisung has known since he was a small child. He notes no new stalls so far as they pass the two smithing streets, blacksmithing and goldsmithing. They gradually come upon the farmer’s street, passing the carpentry street and the pottery street. The ores street and gems street.

Until, Jisung’s searching eyes catch a glimpse of a scintilla in his periphery. Jisung’s trained mind immediately recognizes a musical instrument from the Northern Barrens, a place he’s only seen through lithographs in textbooks. Next, he sees a set of ritualistic daggers adjacent to the instrument, ones commonly used in certain Kyawah tribes in the surrounding region of Jisung’s city. He flickers to the next object that is slightly obscured by the handle of one of the daggers. His eye sockets widen into saucers. A little bottle blinds Jisung for a minuscule second with reflecting light, as if winking at him. He almost misses it as his father has realized that Jisung has stopped moving, grabbing Jisung by the arm and dragging him away. With a soft huff, Jisung makes a mental note to return and keeps moving with the current of the crowd. 

Jisung knows they’ve reached the farmer’s street when the carts on the edge of their path began to be filled with foodstuffs rather than tools, instruments, or glittering jewelry. The shouts of shopkeepers morph from boasting about the excellence of a product or the skill of a craftsman to the unit prices for meats, vegetables, and fruits. Enrapturing himself in the hive of the farmer’s street, a tinny but sweet voice reaches Jisung’sears. “Jisung! Han Sir!”

Jisung’s ears perk up in recognition. “Hyunjin!” Jisung shouts, turning his head in the direction of the voice. 

“Hyunjin! How are you, lad?” Jisung’s father takes energetic strides towards the man as Jisung bounds up to his favorite chocolate stall owner. Whilst Hyunjin sells sorghum and finger millet on the side, his speciality is known across Jisung’s neighborhood for his delectable quality of chocolates, made from only the richest cacao beans, both of which Hyunjin sells. A wide smile is stretched across Hyunjin's face. His complexion is framed by tightly pulled back long, pale hair, intertwined with braids streaked by decorative black and gold ribbons. It’s reminiscent of the man’s Neosaesian heritage, a tribe with blonde strokes on their heads as sunny as the grains their people still farm. Jisung's never really had a penchant towards clothing customs, but he's always found appreciation for the people's sometimes overwhelmingly ornate black and gold headpieces to express reverence for the two main gods they worship, two phoenix-like creatures that represent day and night respectively. He remembers seeing an image of an iconized painting of the two gods in a history book of minor tribes. The god representing day had feathers and fire trails glowing so bright Jisung thought the mighty bird could have engulfed the half of its page in flames. The god representing night filled the bottom half of the page with a night sky opening on its body, as if blessing Jisung with a glimpse of the heavens upon the creature’s form.

“Good good! Business is business. Nothing peculiar or particular has happened at all. What about you?” Hyunjin responds happily.

Jisung juts in immediately. “I think father and I can both say the same. Speaking of business, say, have you any new information on the marketplace? Scandals? Shocks? Horrors?”

“Jisung, I think that’s enough of your nose poking about Hyunjin's affairs and the affairs of others,” Jisung’s father says with a stern grip on Jisung’s shoulder that betrays a fatherly smile.

Hyunjin laughs. “It’s quite alright. Might I interest you in any chocolate or cacao? As much I love your company, I can’t have the two of you holding up potential customers.”

Jisung’s father immediately apologizes. “Yes, of course. Jisung and I shall get going.”

“Wait!” Jisung says in alarm, surprising his father and even himself a little.

“Yes Jisung?” His father asks curiously.

“Can I stay with Hyunjin until you’ve finished all your buying?”

Jisung’s father hums thoughtfully. “Well, I certainly don’t see why not, but don’t you want to see the butcher?”

Jisung shrugs nonchalantly. “I can see Dowoon when I come down myself. I wanted to shadow Hyunjin to see how he conducts his selling and bartering.”

“Well, as long as Hyunjin consents.”

“Sure! He’s actually already done so a few times before,” the chocolate maker answers.

Jisung father’s blinks in prideful shock. “Oh! I’ll be back to you boys as promptly as I can then,” he says, beginning to walk away. Jisung’s father steps back with a wave. Hyunjin and Jisung wave back as Jisung yells above the crowd’s rowdiness. “Do not worry father! Take your time!”

With Jisung’s father lost to the stream of people, Jisung runs around the front of the stall and begins rearranging a few chocolates and a small pouch of cacao powder. Hyunjin cocks his head. “What are you doing?”

Jisung stands back when he’s satisfied with the rearrangement. At the front middle section of the table, the small pouch of cacao powder is unrapped for any passerby to see, and the chocolates surround it in a V shape, as if the cacao powder has been ensnared at the edge of a cliff by a devious chocolate military surprise attack.

...Maybe he shouldn’t read any more military history books anytime soon.

“Looks nice doesn’t it?” Jisung replies.

“Looks pretentious.”

Jisung sticks out his tongue as Hyunjin rolls his eyes.

“It’s supposed to help catch other people’s eyes. There’s enough voices shouting in the market, adding a visual might assist in drawing some extra customers.”

Hyunjin seems to genuinely mull over Jisung’s words. The chocolate maker nods sagely, making Jisung smile smugly. “Alright, I guess you have a bit of a point.” Hyunjin pauses as Jisung walks himself behind the stall with Hyunjin, before Hyunjin says, “So there’s a new stall you might be interested in.”

Jisung immediately perks up at the statement, eyes widening directly at Hyunjin. “Oh?” Hyunjin chuckles at the younger’s obvious interest. “Well, it’s less of a stall and more of a large wagon filled with bizarrities, tools, and curiosities. I took a quick gander as I was setting up this morning, but I didn’t really know what to make of anything there. How about an errand for you?”

“To do what?”

“To that wagon of course.”

At this, Jisung straightens up even more, barely able to contain himself. “Are you telling me what I think you’re allowing me to do?”

“Jisungie, I know you well enough that you don’t shadow for me sometimes _just_ cause you’re interested in the chocolate trade. Now go before your father comes back and threatens me with bodily harm for losing you.” Hyunjin shoos him, flicking his wrists at Jisung.

Jisung pivots on his heel and rushes through the mass of moving bodies in his way. The glint of the bottle gleams in his mind. Jisung recognized what the bottle was the moment he saw it. The slim crown, shallow curved neck, and tall cylinder shaped vial is always indicative of an herbal bottle. However, the inside was what made his jaw drop. He’s not even entirely sure if what he saw was really what he saw. The muskroot flower--petite and pale lilac petals with stamens that spiked out of the cores of their blossoms and often found balled in a cluster--was a powerful herb that Jisung had found across many of his herbal handbooks. The energy of the flower came from its roots. People who distill the roots of muskroots high in the mountainous Orient, where it only grows, call it the “Oil to the Divine Gateway.” How in the world do you even begin to get your hands on something like that?

For all Jisung knows, his mind is playing hopeful tricks on him, but a prominent voice also keeps arguing that he could never mistake that unique aura. Very few herbs give the divine aura in herbal bottles. He swears he saw all the signs: the soft sheen, the thin glow, and the fading radially scattered particles.

As he skitters through the streets, he chases the image of the wagon Hyunjin described in his mind with an embellished shroud of celestial glow. He could see the musical instrument, the Kyawah daggers, and the little bottled muskroot flower.

Jisung picks up his pace when he thinks he’s nearing, and then, finally, he’s there.

It’s even better than his imagination. The bonnet of the freight wagon bundles at the top edges of the side boards, and a shelf appears to be centered in the body of the wagon. The trinkets that inhabit that wagon seem to sparkle in the sunlight. It makes Jisung wonder if the exposure to the sun is intentional despite the blazing heat. As Jisung’s observant eye scans the scene, he sees the person who Jisung deduces is the merchant, apparent in his lively interaction with another. The merchant doesn’t seem that old from afar. In fact, Jisung thinks he could even be close to his age. The thought of that excites him even more. A merchant near his age with a wagon full of exotic trinkets from faraway lands? He feels an underlying wound of loneliness being exposed, but rather than being filled up by the sun’s intense sunlight, it grasps at the leftover warmth of soft moonlight, aching to be healed completely.

Jisung drinks in all the items he can seen. He brushes everything once, then twice. Every time, he sees something new. Something he doesn’t know. Something he does know.

“What are you looking for you, young sir?”

Jisung jumps slightly, distracted in his ogling. “O-oh, I’m just looking, right now. You have an amazing collection.”

The young merchant’s garments are typical of the region to protect against the harsh, arid environment. Jisung sees dark blue bangs peak out of the other’s head scarf. 

The merchant puffs out his chest, relishing in Jisung’s beaming praise. “Why thank you, young sir!”

“What’s your name?” Jisung blurts out, eager to make the merchant his friend. A scheme forms in his head. Maybe if he can get in the merchant’s good graces, he could convince the other to whisk him away from his current life.

The other looks at him, momentarily surprised by the other’s sudden question. However, he quickly regains his previously charismatic demeanor. “Lee Minho. And what about you?”

“Han Jisung,” Jisung replies, though the last syllable trails off as he floats back to staring at the herbal bottle again, having a hard time taking his eyes off the muskroot flower. Its root’s aura is where the brightest glow of the flower comes from, a hypnotizing glow at that.

“I see your interested in the valerian?”

Jisung furrows his eyebrows. “The valerian?”

“Yes!” Minho replies energetically. “The valerian flower is native across the highlands of the Occidentalis. The herb has been used since the times of Ancient Greece and Rome and is quite potent in healing pain in the head and warding off envy. Its effects are especially strong for women, so it’s a great present for courting a maiden.” He winks as he takes the bottle and holds it out to Jisung.

“Jisung?” Minho asks when he realizes that Jisung is staring at the herbal bottle in his hands in vague horror.

“Th-that’s not!” Jisung splutters, before he swipes the bottle from Minho’s hands and carefully places the bottle back where it was originally. “Please, Minho sir! Handle that bottle with more care!”

Minho’s face immediately contorts into one of shock. “Excuse me?”

“That’s not a valerian!” Jisung says with an explosion of passion, to which Minho immediately hisses out a shush. “Quiet down would you! I have a reputation to uphold! How disrespectful of you to accuse me of deceit! I’ll have you know I travel far and wide and through the most difficult terrain to go to the direct sources of my products. My seller was very clear that the flower is a valerian!”

Jisung takes at least the bit of courtesy to lower his volume, but he continues in his lecture, not backing down from the fact that this merchant doesn’t even seem to know his own products! How disappointing! “What reputation do you have to uphold if you can’t even be thorough enough to check the credibility of your sellers or products? Any herbalist would know that the valerian emits a grey aura due to its planetary signature being Mercury. That herb glows white! The most divine aura! It is clearly a muskroot flower!”

Minho huffs, an irate nerve beginning to form in his head at this disrespectful boy’s onslaught. “And what credibility do _you_ have?” He narrows his eyes. Jisung’s posture abruptly stiffens. “I’m a scholar in training and a well learned one!”

It’s not technically a lie, Jisung reasons in his head. Just a stretched truth. Maybe he doesn’t wear luxurious robes in a castle university, but he doesn’t need a lavish study palace to be well educated, as amazing that would be, surrounded by towering bookshelves that are packed wall to wall with the finest collection of academic literature in the world. The back of the Crystal Emporium provides him ample studying…

Despite Jisung’s weak excuse, Minho seems to back down anyway. “Whatever...I have other customers to tend to. Talk to me when you’re ready to buy something and not accuse me of trickery.”

Jisung pouts as Minho turns his back to him. He was just trying to help him! It’s not his fault that Minho wasn’t as well acquainted with his products as any self-respecting merchant should be. Jisung was just pointing out his ignorance. It can’t be helped that some sellers are bound to lie about their products or get things wrong, even if erroneously so. A merchant only knew so much. In the midst of Jisung pitying himself, he watches as Minho engages with a girl. Minho gives her a charming smile. Jisung scowls as the girl blushes at Minho’s pleasantry.

“Would a lady as lovely as you be interested in a hair ornament? This one is made from the fine bamboo stalks of Sion-”

“-Risun.”

“Excuse me?” Minho scowls at Jisung.

“The comb is from the Kingdom of Risun. The design is at least,” Jisung says. He shifts weight from one side to another uncomfortably.

Minho shakes his head, turning back to the girl. “Well, there’s a wide selection of hair ornaments and jewelry from the Orient for you to choose from.”

“I think I’ll pass actually,” she says with a raise of her palm. She gives a cursory look at Jisung before leaving.

A growl rises from Minho’s throat. “You know what? I think it’s time for you to leave. You’re driving away my customers.”

“Or I could be your apprentice.”

“I- excuse me?” Minho reels back in shock, not for the first time since they first met minutes ago.

“To help perform more thorough checks? I could even handle the financials? I’m well studied in money and currency.”

“Even if I wanted to, I’m far too young. And how come someone as well learned as you lives in a neighborhood at the edge of the city? Shouldn’t you be off in some rich university? Locked up in study for years? Not out in a dirty market like some street boy?”

Jisung meets Minho’s gaze solidly at this question. Finally, a question about his qualifications. Jisung pats himself on the back for being able to direct the conversation to this point...even with a few tactless blusters.

“Because I’m the only person who will take over my father’s glass and crystal shop when I’m older, so I need to be able to run the store.”

Minho scoffs in disbelief. “How come you’re so awful at socializing if you’re supposed to be taking over a store- Wait. If you’re meant to be taking over the store, why are you asking to be an apprentice to me? Shouldn’t you be asking for an apprentice ship from- I don’t know- any other stall owner in this marketplace?” He sweeps his arm around him at the rest of the marketplace.

“I-” Jisung purses his lips. “I don’t want to take over the business.”

Minho falls silent, a heavy silence. Jisung quizzically looks at him. “That’s irresponsible of you. Go back to your father.”

“But-” Jisung starts, but stops himself when he takes a second look at Minho’s expression. There’s a hard angle to the sudden change in Minho’s disposition. The retorts die in Jisung’s throat. As Minho glowers at him, the anger in his eyes holds something that makes Jisung freeze.

“You seem like you’re in need of someone to tell you to take responsibility for yourself. After all, it’d be a heavy burden to your father to have such a disobedient son.”

Jisung gapes at Minho. Before Minho can do anything, Jisung takes the opportunity to turn his back to Minho as a final, pathetic defense. He stalks off with clenched teeth and white-knuckled fists, ready to rant to Hyunjin about everything that had just transpired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's here! Sorry for the wait. It's been a weird past few days fixing my jet lag while being sick at the same time while also jumping back into school immediately. Hope you finally enjoy their meeting!


	3. Appetentia

At dusk, the easterly wind blows. Minho knows it by heart and by skin. It seeps into the small crevices of his cloak and washes him with a nightly chill. He greets it with a sigh and an acknowledgement of prayer in his head.

Yvashi, the easterly wind. One of the eight children to the Goddess of wind, Numia, and a familiar companion to his often lonely travels. And if he forgets Yvashi, he can always consult one of the other eight children or the birds in the day or the North Star, Ursae, in the night.

This evening, he consults the twilight, as he does so every evening. Although, when he seats himself for this daily ritual, whether on a trotting horse or his thin bedroll, the reasons he looks into the fading days are less navigational and more pensive. To Minho’s delight, he has discovered that inns in this city are perfect for sunset watching, most having a second floor to increase circulation throughout its baked brick buildings.

The papers for tracking his trading and selling lie messily on the small desk behind him in his inn room. As he takes a glance back at them, the day’s activities flash through his mind, beginning from the dark early morning he had arrived into the section of the city he had never previously been in before and ending with him tiredly packing his merchant wagon to rest for the night. 

Minho winces when he remembers the peculiar boy he had met. Nervousness wells up inside him, replaying the words they exchanged and the reactions of the other boy. The other’s name was Jisung? He believes? A mental argument he had been desperately trying to avoid throughout the day--so as to not disrupt his business--comes to the forefront of his mind. Perhaps he had been a little harsh on the boy...but what with Minho’s ungodly early arrival to the city, lack of sleep, recent downtrend in financial conditions, and reminders to his father, he sulkily tries to justify his biting reactions to the other boy’s outburst and criticism.

Yvashi whistles, bringing in the coolness of the night. Minho heaves a sigh when the wind rests again, immersing himself in the cleansing effect of the wind. Though the anxiety over the boy has been substantially muted, it unearths a loneliness Minho is oh so familiar with. It’s a loneliness that had been carved out of his heart ever since his father passed in a bandit raid and hasn’t been able to be filled since. No matter how many new people he meets, no matter how many new lands he travels--with new sunrises and new smiles--he can’t seem to escape his own self-pity. Truly, he can’t fully enjoy merchantry as he once did.

But the trade is simply what he must do, for every smile he receives and every livelihood he helps enliven, it reminds him why he does what he does and why he simply can’t stop what he does. Every new day is a new prospect to spread some exotic product to the opposite ends of the empire and support humble individuals who, otherwise, would be struggling more without Minho’s assistance.

That is what brings him fulfillment, Minho supposes: the relieved and happy smiles of those he helps along the way. That’s what this is all for.

Minho stands, stretching out his limbs. He ends his ritual with the disappearance of the last band of faint marigold dipping under the horizon, leaving a sea of dark blue. The chair he dragged from the small desk is moved back, and as he sweeps his eyes over the financial papers again, his gut squeezes at the trend of decreasing numbers for the sale of his products. With a shut of his eyes, Minho resigns himself to resting for the day. He forces himself to think about the public bathhouses he had passed by, looking forward to the nice washing he’ll be able to get before he leaves the city. When he lays down on the bed, the vision of the streets of the bathhouse still in mind, he remembers the boy. The last thought he registers in his exhaustion is a quiet hope that Jisung will come back, so he can apologize to him.

* * *

Jisung angrily jabs his reed pen as he writes an analytical essay on the regional differences of glass designs between the Erhostic Empire and Hienian Empire, the former being the one Jisung is native to.

“Wonder if he could even tell the basic differences between the glass forms of the two…” Jisung grumbles. “Whatever. He can go and mold blow his stupid, faux, wiseacre almond brain and get caught in a dustorm for all I care. Bet he’d mistake a hematite stone for black obdisianite and knock himself unconscious.”

“Careful who you curse at, Jisung. Karma is a fickle creature.” Jisung’s father is in his usual position when they open the Crystal Emporium in the morning. Jisung pouts, wanting to continue his petulant rambling, but he withholds it with pursed lips. He puts his pencil down and leans back in his chair. “I met a new merchant yesterday,” Jisung says offhandedly.

“Who was it?” Jisung’s father asks.

“His name was Minho, and he had a wagon filled with so many objects from foreign lands!” Jisung suddenly begins gushing. However, it’s short lived as he remembers the merchant who manned the wagon. “Only thing is he was kind of…” Jisung motions as if he was trying to physically grasp for the right word.

“Of?” His father glances at Jisung.

Remembering the exchange from yesterday, their interactions come more clearly in his mind, and Jisung starts to see where the faults in some of his behaviour lied. Jisung falters. “...peculiar?” 

Then, Jisung remembers his scheme—ringing loud and clear inside him again—and he remembers that he’s determined to carry it out. Discrediting the other’s character to his father would only hurt his plan.

“Peculiar? In what way? He’s certainly not the only merchant who specializes in trinkets.” Jisung twitches when he hears a distinct tone of intrigue in his father’s voice.

“No, but while I can usually identify the majority of foreign goods in other merchant wagons, in his, there were almost half that I couldn’t recognize. I was so astounded that I couldn’t help but talk to him!”

When Jisung shifts to look at his father, his father curiously looks at him. “That is indeed new from you,” Jisung’s father comments. His father puts the glass on an empty shelf behind him, filling in the empty space it had been removed from. Jisung has learned how to decipher the sundry deadpans his father wears, the only variance to his father’s monotonous presence. There’s a glint of interest that Jisung hopes has been reflected from himself to his father’s.

Jisung holds his breath, waiting. He watches his father pick up a new crystal Jisung had found just a few weeks ago. A rhythmic tap dances from Jisung’s point finger on the wooden frame of his chair.

“I’d like to shadow him, if that is okay with you, father,” Jisung nearly rushes out, but he stays composed, aware that his eagerness is noticeable to his father. He can’t leave too many signs, lest his father grow suspicious prematurely.

Finally, Jisung receives his father’s full attention. Jisung straightens up at him before he freezes.

His father is frowning. “Son, while usually I wouldn’t be adverse to your business studies, for what reason do you wish to shadow a merchant you hardly know? You have given nary an explanation to this exotic merchant of yours.”

Jisung inwardly scowls. His tapping resumes, but his nails dig more deeply into the grooves of his seat. 

Jisung knows that look, too. The cautionary look. Jisung often forgets that his father is learned in reading Jisung, too, more than he’s willing to admit. “Could we visit him?” Jisung blurts. A gulp briefly contains his anxiousness. He needs to lay the prospect bare, even if it means rewriting some of his plans. He doesn’t exactly know the risks of revealing his father to Minho. Perhaps they might conspire to end Jisung’s plan abruptly, but as long as Jisung can spin his threads carefully enough, he might just be able to pull it off.

He almost smirks when he notices the subtleness of his father being taken aback at his forwardness. “I don’t want to pass this chance up before he leaves!” Jisung says, reinvigorated.

“When is he leaving?”

In half a second, Jisung remembers he doesn’t know. All he caught was the merchant’s name, Minho. In another half second, Jisung blurts out, “I- uh, don’t quite remember actually! Perhaps we should go tomorrow to ask. I think you might like him a lot, actually.” Jisung is wide eyed and slightly breathless as his father sinks his words in.

With a light touch of his chin, his father huffs through his nose. “Perhaps. If he is only staying temporarily, it might be worth it to give him some courtesy, especially since you’ve already invited yourself to an introduction.”

Jisung celebrates in his head and goes back to finishing his essay. When he finishes, he returns to his room and takes out his personal diary. On the first page is a tally of all the matches of nerves he’s had with his father, a count he’s begun since the age of thirteen. He happily strikes a line for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no clue whether or not past me was finished with this chapter, but I might as well post it before life catches up with me again and I'm unable to find time to write. :p


End file.
